On Thursday I stayed in, away from the tube strike and the madness it created in the city, I worked on my novel and started reading The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes.

On Friday I went to an Internations networking event at Chakana Club but I ended up sitting at a table, chatting with a German girl about botox because I am doing worse and worse in crowded places. I go to these events for the chance they gave me to meet interesting people that have great stories to tell but I usually end up in a corner, on the edge of a panic attack. I keep trying, though.

Beer, chips and this view go very well together!

And then it was Saturday, which started with a beautiful walk in the sun from Leicester Square to South Bank, continued with beer and chips and a nice chat in a pub with a great view at the bridge full of tourists and at Big Ben, then with another walk along the Thames all the way to Tamesis Dock, a supposedly nice and quiet floating pub. But, once we opened the door and entered Tamesis Dock at 5 pm, was like travelling in time for a few hours, all the way to midnight.

Dressed up happy people, drunk and high on life, were dancing the afternoon away all over the boat, like there was no tomorrow. Everybody was hugging and kissing everybody, everybody was dancing with everybody and the pictures they were taking to themselves were to each other were already far from being Facebook material.

The 5 pm party looked like this

We sat down at a table in the middle of the party, wondering what we did good in this life to deserve such a treat on a quiet, almost boring Saturday afternoon.

The feeling was awesome. We felt like we could watch without being watched (we thought the party people were too drunk to even acknowledge our presence) so we ordered some wine to get ourselves in the mood (I was secretly hoping I can get tipsy enough to join them but it didn’t happen).

Trying on my best “back in my day…” look, while secretly hoping to get drunk already so that I could join them:)

They took pictures of us and we were laughing at their surprise the next day when they would look at the pictures and would ask themselves: “Who the fuck are these people at our party?”

I personally felt like a party crasher and I loved the feeling. I used to crash parties in my very early 20’s, I would have never imagined myself doing that in my late 30’s but it was a honest mistake, nothing planned here.

Shortly, the party people started talking to us. They introduced themselves, told us it was a birthday party which started at 1 pm, we found out they were from New Zeeland, working in London and that they would later on go to a club in Shoreditch and we were welcome to join them.

One of them remembered he was working for Durex so he marketed the brand to us for a while, insisting on the lemon flavoured condom and all of them apologized for being loud and crazy. Very lovely people, I must admit! And apparently, we weren’t watching without being watched, as we believed!

Three bottles of wine later (so I’ve heard, I don’t remember the third one, to be honest) I left the boat in a hurry to catch my last train home and the thought of an hour spent in the night bus gave me wings.

We didn’t follow the party people in Shoreditch, even if they left us a phone number and a post code, because we had more people joining us in the evening and a live band started to play. So yeah, I spent Sunday in bed, with a sore throat, a tiny bit of a hangover and with The Girl You Left Behind. Like I said, it was almost a quiet weekend.